Two Texts on the Mill Street Gym: Price, Numbers and Trust
Brackenford council plans to turn the empty unit on Mill Street into a 24-hour gym. Text A is a council press release headed 'Fitness for everyone'. It says: 'The Mill Street Active Hub opens in September and will create 12 jobs. Memberships start at £9.99 a month, and 200 discounted places will go to residents on low incomes. A spokesperson said: "This is a fantastic deal for Brackenford - nobody will be priced out."' Text B is the Mill Street Residents' Association newsletter: 'Only 200 of 3,000 memberships will be discounted - that is one in fifteen. The press release says nothing about the four parking spaces, the deliveries until midnight, or the fact that this unit was earmarked for a health centre in the 2022 plan. Residents were not consulted.' The consultation closes on 30 April; the council votes on 12 May. A neighbour tells you she trusts Text B more because 'it has the real numbers in it'.
1. Which text would you use to find the monthly price, and which to find residents' concerns? Explain your choices.
Read the worked answer
Text A for the price: it states '£9.99 a month' directly, which Text B never mentions. That is a straightforward information-retrieval decision.
Text B for residents' concerns: it raises parking, late deliveries and the loss of the planned health centre, none of which appear in Text A. If you wanted to know what people living on Mill Street object to, Text B is the only one of the two that tells you.
The interesting part is what the choice reveals. Text A is written to present the scheme well, so it leads with jobs and a low headline price and leaves out the things objectors care about. Text B is written to oppose, so it leads with the ratio of discounted places and the missing information, and never mentions the price. Neither text is a neutral summary, so the right method is to use each for what it actually contains and go to the consultation documents for anything neither covers.
2. Find one fact and one opinion in Text A and explain how a reader can tell them apart.
Read the worked answer
A fact: 'will create 12 jobs'. It is a specific, countable claim that could be checked against the council's business case or later against who is actually employed.
An opinion: 'This is a fantastic deal for Brackenford'. 'Fantastic' is a value judgement - it cannot be verified, only agreed with or disputed.
The harder example is 'nobody will be priced out'. It looks factual because of the word 'nobody', but it is a prediction dressed as a promise, and the 200 discounted places are exactly the kind of limit that could make it untrue for some residents.
The test a reader applies is not 'is it in a serious-looking document' but 'could someone show me the evidence, and would a reasonable person with the same evidence have to agree?'. Facts pass that test; opinions and predictions do not.
3. The neighbour says Text B is more trustworthy because it contains numbers. How far do you agree?
Read the worked answer
Only partly. Numbers are useful because they can be checked, but the presence of a number does not tell you whether it was chosen to inform or to persuade.
Text B's '200' comes from the council's own figure, so it is likely accurate; the 'one in fifteen' is B's own arithmetic on it, which is a fair comparison but still a presentation choice. The '3,000 memberships' is a projection, not a confirmed count, so treating it as hard fact would be a mistake.
Text B also leaves things out - it never mentions the £9.99 price, which is Text A's strongest point - and it is written by a campaign group with an interest in the outcome. Text A has an interest too, and its 'nobody will be priced out' is weaker than any number in B.
The defensible position is that B is more specific but not neutral, so you would check the 2022 plan and the consultation figures yourself before deciding.